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Final review of the night, promise! I watched The Sword and the Dragon a movie full of bearded Russians. Apparently it's folk story, or fairy tale if you wish, about a giant that turns to stone one day and leaves his sword for the next champion to pick up. But that sword is carried around by pilgrims who find a big man that can't use his legs. So the pilgrims give him a magic elixir, and he regains his strength. They give him the sword, and he goes out to fight the evil Mongols that are invading his homeland. He befriends the prince, who later throws him in the dungeon for 20 years or so. Meanwhile, his wife had a baby boy, and was captured by the Mongols, whose King raises the boy as his own.

When the Mongols return some 20 years later, the prince realizes his mistake and lets the hero out of the dungeon. He then fights the Mongols. When he fights his son, he realizes who he is and tells him. The young man immediately believes him, and swears vengeance on the Mongols. They rescue his mother and defeat the Mongols.

I give this movie three empty seats for the number of minutes a dragon was actually in this movie. Yes, I counted.

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Racket Girls was one of the worst movies I've had to sit through in a long time, but fortunately for me it had the best short film at the beginning: Are You Ready for Marriage?, a gem of a short film as long as you see it with Mike and the 'bots.

More Boing!

Anyway, Racket Girls was about female wrestlers. And before you think that's hot, think about your grandmother as a female wrestler. Now you've got the right idea. That's what this film was like. Long, long scenes of your grandma in her gym shorts wrestling. And it had one really short Italian guy. I don't think he was a midget because he was taller than Danny DeVito (at least he looks like it), and that's where I draw the line. Anyone shorter than Danny is a midget, and anyone taller is a short person. Danny himself is the line, he doesn't count.

So the movie was about wrestling, and gambling, and how you can't corrupt the pure sport of female wrestling. Or Wrassling, however they say it. This movie was horrid, but the riffing was priceless. You need to see it just for the short film. I give it two empty seats for the two female pro "wrasslers" that wouldn't throw their match and corrupt the sport they love.

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And then there's Kitten With a Whip, an old Ann-Margret movie. Apparently the director did several really good Twilight Zone episodes, and was a much better storyteller than most directors of movies that MST3K usually gets.

And the movie really was much better than normal, and certainly had some of that Twilight Zone surrealism in it. Jody, a troubled teen, attacks her guardian and escapes from reform school, crashes in a political candidate's home while he's out. The candidate returns, but his wife and daughter are out of town. He discovers Jody, tries to help her, and all she does is take advantage of him. She manipulates him, invites her crazy friends over, and they make him drive them to Mexico. On the way, she runs over one of her friends, the other gets a bad razor slash to the arm. When they get to Mexico, they try to get revenge on Jody, where the candidate guy once again tries to save her when he realizes how much trouble she is in with her "friends."

The end up crashing their cars, the two friends dying instantly. Jody lived long enough to exonerate the candidate guy so nobody suspected anything bad of him. I think this movie deserves two empty seats, for the kitten and the whip that never appear in the movie.

The movie wasn't as bad as some of the others in this season (some still to come!), but the riffing was great. The movie was about a money heist. A pilot's wife is kidnapped so they can force him to delay his plane from taking off. In the meantime, other accomplices steal money from a plane (it was being shipped by air for some reason), and in a genius move put the money into boxes they were shipping along with the money, removing the ballast they originally had in the boxes. The getaway guy gets nabbed, but they only recover a bundle of old magazines. Fortunately for the good guys, they figure out what must have happened, and find the loot, which they put back on the delayed plane so they can nab the bandits red-handed later.

During all this, there's a side plot with a top newspaper reporter and his estranged wife and child. The kid loves flying, so he walks out on the tarmac and gets into a piper and manages to start it up and take off (somehow). I guess this was the kid acting out from the inattention of his parents or something. So some other pilot guy gets in a plane and talks the boy into landing the plane. Everybody lives, and they couple get back together due to the shared peril of their son.

And the TV series never gets made. I give this movie one empty seat for the sunglasses the piper's owner was supposedly looking for that allowed the kid to climb in his plane, start the engine, and fly it away.

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Ah, another Ed Wood film. The Sinister Urge is about just that—it's a film about the evils of pornography. When some girls are being found dead in a local park, cops suspect foul play as they are girls that were featured in photos and movies by a local porno-ring.

I understand the point this movie is trying to make, but it was made by Ed Wood! Rife with horrid, dry acting and scene cutting (I believe even scenes from other movies were pasted in to this one), it was just a bad film.

I rate this movie one empty seat, for Ed Wood, who actually put himself in a came in this movie.

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Next up, The Starfighters! Guess what? It has nothing to do about fighting in the stars. Or anything remotely science fiction.

This movie was a 1960's advertisement to be an Air Force pilot. It was the 60's' version of that awful movie Top Gun. Except there was no combat. Yes! No combat! This movie was all about flying jets around, and had long (really long) refueling scenes. Seriously, there was next to no content in this travesty of film-making. There was a teacher, and a couple of pilot trainees. They flew some training missions. One guy crashed once because of a storm. One trainee's dad was a senator that wanted him to fly something other than jets. Did I mention the airborne refueling? They did lots of that. Then they got dispatched to Europe! Then the movie was over. Seriously, no action at all, unless you count the chaperoned make-out session in the front seat of a convertible.

In all honesty, I can only rate this movie an entire empty theater of seats. Seriously, somebody spent real money making this crap! Unbelievable!

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I watched Last of the Wild Horses the other day, since I was sick at home. In fact, I watched seven episodes and you're going to hear about them all. I know, I never shut up…

So anyway, it's a western. The odd thing about this movie is that, during the opening host sequence, Dr. F and TV's Frank send a "matter transference" device up to the SOL during an ion storm and cause a dimensional swap—now there are evil, alternate versions of Mike, the bots, etc (ala Star Trek) and the Mad Scientists are on the SOL watching and riffing the first part of the movie. What I remember most is probably all the gay cowboy jokes. They were many.

There were two girls in the film, and I kept getting them mixed up. Typical of a bad film, but still, I was confused a lot. There was at least one comedy relief guy, and scenes of horses running around. Not so memorable, really. Certainly nothing science fiction-y, except for the alternate evil twin parts of the host segment.

I give this movie two empty seats, one for each of the women in this film that I could never really tell apart.